The trial of the contempt cases at San Francisco was long and hard-fought by both sides. McKenzie has had an array of able champions at every stage of the proceedings. Application to the United States Supreme Court was made in his behalf to oust the Circuit Court of Appeals of its jurisdiction to try these cases, but the application was denied.
On the eleventh day of February, 1901, the Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco filed its opinion and judgment in these contempt cases. The long and able opinion delivered by Judge Ross covers the entire history of the Wild Goose litigation, and incidentally refers to Mr. McKenzie's relations with the Alaska Gold Mining Company. After referring to and commenting upon the various proceedings, which are summarized as "this shocking record," and disposing of the technical points raised by the receiver's counsel, the Court say:
"The circumstances attending the appointment of the receiver in these cases, however, and his conduct after as well as before the appointment, as shown by the record and evidence, so far from impressing us with the sincerity of the pretension that his refusal to obey the writs issued out of this court was based upon the advice of his counsel that they were void, satisfy us that it was intentional and deliberate, and in furtherance of the high-handed and grossly illegal proceedings initiated almost as soon as Judge Noyes and McKenzie had set foot on Alaskan territory at Nome, and which may be safely said to have no parallel in the jurisprudence of this country. And it speaks well for the good, sober sense of the people gathered on that remote and barren shore that they depended solely upon the courts for the correction of the wrongs thus perpetrated among and against them, which always may be depended upon to right, sooner or later, wrongs properly brought before them." It is then adjudged that the receiver did commit contempts of court, and that for the said contempts he be imprisoned in the county jail of the county of Alameda, California, for the period of one year. In conclusion, "the marshal will execute this judgment forthwith."
In view of this deliberate adjudication and severe arraignment by a federal court of rank next to the highest tribunal of the United States, and considering also the earnest efforts made at Washington and the demands of the Pacific coast newspapers for the removal of the weak and unscrupulous judge who had manifestly served as the tool of Alexander McKenzie, his recently dethroned receiver, it was natural to suppose that effective measures would at once be taken to rectify so great an error as his appointment had proved to be. But, strange to say, this reasonable expectation was not verified.
In the United States Senate, on the 26th of February, 1901, an attempt was made to exonerate Messrs. McKenzie and Noyes. Senator Hansbrough of North Dakota characterized the former as "in every respect an honorable and responsible man," and read a letter which he had received from Judge Noyes, in which the latter elaborately declaims how honest and upright he is and always has been. Senator Pettigrew of South Dakota championed McKenzie as a man of "character," and eulogized Noyes as "the peer of any man who sits upon the bench in any State or Territory in the Union." But Senator Stewart gave the whole affair a very thorough airing, and caused to be printed in the "Congressional Record" the complete history of the receivership proceedings above set forth, together with the opinion and judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals.
One of the last official acts of Attorney-General Griggs was the preparation and transmission of charges against Judge Noyes, which reached their destination in June, 1901; and as only a reply with explanations was required, Noyes had a lease of official life during the mining season of 1901. His answer to the charges preferred against him was in the nature of a general denial, and a justification of his conduct in every respect.
Despite, however, its various handicaps, the Nome country, it is estimated, yielded in the year 1900 between five and six million dollars in gold—almost as much as was paid to Russia for Alaska in 1867.
Thus far no well-defined quartz ledges have been discovered, but it is not impossible that such may yet be found. Once on a steady basis, it will from year to year, like the Klondike, increase its output until, finally deprived of its only attraction and drained of its sole asset, it shall again assume the dreary, uninhabited state in which it was discovered.
Lieutenant Jarvis estimates that, in addition to the two thousand who wintered there, eighteen thousand people were at Nome in the summer of 1900. Probably six thousand remained in the country throughout the following winter, well provided for, as the government at the close of the mining season transported the remaining needy and destitute.